The Assassin

by Andrew Britton

  As usual, Naomi nearly missed Emmett Mills when she finally made it to the conference room, balancing a steaming cup of coffee and a stack of paperwork in her arms. At five feet three, Naomi was only a few inches shorter than the silver-haired chief of station, but she knew that the man’s slight stature merely served to disguise a powerful intellect. By his midthirties, Mills had already earned four master’s degrees from three different schools, as well as an honorary doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.

  Now fifty-four and approaching mandatory retirement, he was something of a legend at Langley. Naomi knew about most of the things he had pulled off during his illustrious career, but even if she’d been kept in the dark, she would have recognized the man’s experience in his confident, finely drawn features. Mills was constantly wearing a slightly bemused smile, as though appraising the talent — or ineptitude — of the next generation. It always made her feel self-conscious, feelings that were not quite canceled out by the knowledge that he needed her. Mills had spent the majority of his career in the operations directorate; as a result, he relied heavily on Naomi when it came to technical matters. Since her posting to the embassy, she had been responsible for most of the electronic traffic between their department and the various British intelligence agencies.

  “Glad you could finally make it, Kharmai.” She started in on a feeble apology, but he held up a hand to stop her. “Do me a favor and kick on that doorstop. We’ve only got a few minutes before the defense attaché shows up to claim the room, so I’ll make this brief. Did you find everything I asked for?”

  She nodded as she took the seat across from him, nearly spilling her coffee in the process. Behind her, the door eased shut with a gentle click, locking automatically. She held up a folder. “This is a copy of our current watch list. All of these people have been linked in some way to one of the nine major terrorist groups in Iraq, and they’re all based here in London. It’s hard to keep track with our limited resources, but we do the best we can. Most of the ties are incidental: family relations, for example. Anything involving a financial transaction gets kicked over to Scotland Yard, MI5, and MI6. Unfortunately, they’re a little less generous when it comes time to reciprocate, but that’s understandable. This is their country, after all.”

  Mills nodded along, neatly concealing his vague amusement. He’d long ago noticed Kharmai’s peculiar lapses when it came to her own national identity.

  She set the file to one side, then selected another, much heavier folder. “This one came courtesy of the Ministry of Defense. It’s a compilation of all the voiceprints they have on file at Whitehall, arranged in numerical order and based on cell phone intercepts here in the U.K. This is only a sample, of course. They’ve been fine-tuning the system, but they face the same problem we do in terms of geographical limitations. For us, the towers are based in Fort Meade, which confines the intercepts to the metro area. Here it’s the M41 to the west and the A10 to the east.” She was referring to the main roads that circled the city. “All in all, it’s a seven-mile radius, or about twenty-five square miles, total, with the MoD as the epicenter.”

  “Okay. Do we have an idea of the daily take?”

  “More than an idea, sir.” Her smile was almost coy; she was on steady ground now, sure of herself and what she was saying. “Don’t forget, I know a lot of people over there. Right now, they’re picking off between two and three hundred transmissions a day.”

  He was surprised. “That many?”

  Naomi shrugged. “Most of it’s worthless. They’ve talked about pulling some of the keywords to narrow the scope. The NSA is playing around with the same idea, but the towers on the roof at Whitehall are much, much smaller, which limits both the range and the amount of traffic they can handle.”

  “Will they give us access to their database?”

  “If we can come up with a good reason. We’ll still need some search parameters, though. They have thousands of intercepts on file.”

  “What about going the other way? If you had a recording, for example, could you run it through the system to look for a match?”

  “Of course. In fact, that’s the easiest way, but it still takes some time.”

  “What kind of time are we talking about? Hours or days?”

  She considered the question. “Again, you’re better off if you have someplace to start, like age or gender. Ninety percent of the flagged intercepts are male voices, anyway, but everything helps. Maybe a couple of days, if you were starting with nothing.” She tilted her head and frowned. “Sir, what’s going on? If this is about the Iraqi prime minister, we can send it to the top of the list. If there’s a match on file, you’ll cut down on a lot of your wait time. I think I can guarantee cooperation on the British end. The default position in a situation like this is to share everything.”

  His smile was fading fast. “What makes you think that—”

  “Sir, give me some credit. You ask me to bring you our watch list and this” — she held up the voiceprint folder — “which is worthless without the recordings, but you already knew that.” She paused for a moment. “They found something in Baghdad, didn’t they? A tape?”

  He hesitated, then nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, it’s a tape. But they didn’t find it. We found it, here in London.”

  That surprised her; it was standard practice to work with MI5 on such occasions. The Agency rarely took things into its own hands on friendly soil. “And?”

  Mills exhaled slowly and leaned back in his chair, debating his options. It was a tough call. If he brought her in all the way, he might end up losing her back to Langley. Naomi was a valuable part of his team, but if the recording gave them something to work with, she would probably use it to push her own self-interests.

  He knew that she wasn’t happy at the embassy. After what she’d managed to pull off the previous year, she would have expected a bump in the CTC, maybe to section chief. From what he had seen of her work, Emmett Mills was inclined to agree. He made his decision.

  “Okay, Naomi, here’s the deal. The final casualty list for the bombing at the Babylon Hotel was released two days ago. You know about al-Maliki?”

  She nodded. The Iraqi prime minister had sustained serious injuries and was still listed in critical condition at an undisclosed location. The press had engaged in wild speculation, of course, one news agency going so far as to air an in-depth profile of al-Maliki’s potential successors. The hysteria was beginning to die down, though, as it now appeared he was going to pull through.

  Mills continued. “We had to wait for the list to see who was missing. The hotel manager was killed in the blast, along with most of the prime minister’s security detail. He was careful in that respect; the bodyguards were screened beforehand, so the survivors were cleared in a hurry. The gate guards were cleared as well. They were rotated on a daily basis, but in that case, the interrogations did yield some useful information. In the first week of September, a crew was brought in to repair electrical problems on the second and third floors of the hotel. The work took ten days to complete. During that time, the assistant manager, Rashid Amin al-Umari, spoke to each of the shift leaders, asking them to pass the vehicles through without a security check.”

  “That’s interesting.” Naomi leaned forward in her seat. “That’s very interesting. Let me guess. Rashid has dropped off the face of the earth.”

  Mills aimed a finger at her. “Exactly. We can’t find him anywhere, but it’s certainly not for lack of trying. The Iraqi Police Service raided his house in Baghdad yesterday, and” — he handed her a glossy 8 x 10 — “this morning we sent a team into this residence in Knightsbridge.”

  Naomi accepted the photograph and studied it briefly. She was looking at a large home with carefully kept gardens and a beautiful stone façade. “How does a hotel manager afford a house like this?”

  “Inheritance,” Mills replied. “It belonged to his father, but al-Umari lived there until three months ago.”

  “Belong
ed to his father?”

  “Karim al-Umari died during a U.S. airstrike over Baghdad in 2003. His wife — Rashid’s mother — was also killed in the blast, as was his baby sister. Since the elder al-Umari had connections that went right to the top of the Baath regime, the bombing of his personal residence wasn’t quite seen as… accidental. Rashid gave an interview to Al-Jazeera a few weeks after he buried his family, in which he made some fairly candid remarks about his feelings toward the United States.”

  Naomi took a few seconds to interpret that last remark; Mills was known to favor the British trait of understatement. “Well, that explains his motivation, I guess. But why that hotel in particular?”

  “Because the prime minister frequently stayed there if he had an early appointment the next day. In this case, al-Maliki was scheduled to leave for Paris at seven a.m., so to avoid the traffic moving in and out of the Green Zone, he booked an entire floor at the Babylon for himself and his aides. The summit was scheduled a month or so in advance. Al-Maliki’s plans to attend were public knowledge, so the bombers made a decision based on precedent, which obviously turned out to be right. They had plenty of time to set up an electrical malfunction, which al-Umari used to get them into the building.”

  “How did they plant the devices?”

  “They built them into the walls on long-delay timers. Ingenious, really. The IRA tried something similar in ’84. They failed as well, by the way, only their target was Margaret Thatcher and her entire cabinet.”

  “What about the tape? Where was it found?”

  “In a wall safe in the house. He didn’t do a good job of hiding it, to be honest. He might as well have left it on the kitchen table.”

  Naomi thought about that for a second. “He didn’t feel the need to hide it, probably because it wasn’t supposed to exist in the first place. Al-Umari recorded it himself, right? For insurance?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “But you can’t identify the other voice.” The chief of station shook his head in the negative. “What about the gate guards? Maybe one of them—”

  “Not yet. Remember, this is a new development, Naomi. They only found the tape this morning, but it’s already in the works. The Iraqis will have a copy sometime tomorrow.”

  “And the men who planted the bomb?”

  “They’ve disappeared as well. One point of interest: the team leader was a German by the name of Erich Kohl. That comes from the gate guards, by the way; they didn’t do the security checks, but they did sign the workers in each morning. Kohl only showed up in the second week. Interestingly enough, the German government doesn’t have a contractor by that name in the region, at least not in an official capacity.”

  Naomi nodded and reached for her coffee, which was already growing cold. “So, Kohl might be the mystery man on the tape?”

  “I’d say there’s a good chance. What I want you to do is bring it to our British friends and see if they can dig up a matching voiceprint on file. The conversation takes place in Arabic… Will that be a problem?”

  She shook her head. “No, probably not. We can work around it.”

  “Good. There’s a copy waiting for you in Operations.” Mills leaned back in his chair and studied her plaintively. “If you need me to get involved, that’s not a problem, but I’d prefer to handle it at our level. You can see the problem… We are not supposed to have this tape. I hope someone owes you a favor.”

  Naomi smiled as she gathered her things. “Actually, sir, I think I have just the man in mind.”

  CHAPTER 5

  FALLUJAH

  Mark Walland was on one knee in the dusty bed of the third Tacoma, which was turned around and facing north, back toward the train station. The other vehicles, parked about 30 meters away, had yet to pull the same maneuver. From his position, he could clearly see the two Iraqis standing guard, as well as the AK-47 rifles they held, which were vaguely pointed in the direction of the American visitors.

  The scenario made him distinctly uneasy, even though he had performed similar tasks with Ryan Kealey on two other occasions in the past few days, and many times before that. The exchange of money for information and regional support was nothing new in the intelligence business, but Walland, despite his youth and limited experience, knew a few things about how effective the practice really was. A stack of American dollars could get you all kinds of promises, but it couldn’t reveal a man’s true nature, and the Arabs, at least the ones the Agency dealt with, were skilled dissemblers. Walland knew it was just a matter of time before one of their “clients” decided that the money just wasn’t worth it.

  He glanced at his watch, then lifted his left hand to adjust his ball cap. His right was wrapped around the grip of his M4 carbine. The weapon was specially modified, with a Rail Interface System that included a Visible Laser and a forward handgrip. Mounted to the upper receiver was an ACOG low-light, 4-power telescopic sight. Despite the rifle’s proven worth in combat, it didn’t offer Walland a great deal of comfort, as his intuition told him that the surrounding buildings were probably filled with armed insurgents. He was in a very dangerous place, and he knew it. Still, at least he had the advantage of a weapon at hand. Kealey’s position was much more precarious. At the moment, Kealey had nothing but a backpack full of cash and the word of a Sunni warlord.

  The dark hallways seemed far more extensive than he would have guessed from the front of the building. From the search at the entrance, Kealey had passed into the custody of two more fighters, each of whom wore kaffiyehs to shield their identities. He walked between the two men, their feet shuffling forward on cracked tile. The dim light prevented him from seeing who else might have been lurking in the shadows, but it did give him the opportunity to carefully withdraw an object from the main compartment of his pack, which he slid into the waistband of his utility pants. He then pulled his T-shirt over the slight bulge. His escorts didn’t seem to notice the small movement.

  A few more paces, and they stopped at a plain wooden door. One of the Iraqis ducked in first, then reemerged and gestured for Kealey to enter.

  The room was spare and cramped, with a small window to the right. The hazy light that drifted through the dirty panes was enough to pull two men out of the shadows. The first was a guard armed with a battle-scarred AK-47. He stood in a corner, behind and to the left of his charge. The second man sat in the middle of the room, his thick arms resting on a bare metal table. When their eyes met, he smiled and gestured at the chair opposite his own. Kealey took the seat, dropping the backpack onto the floor next to him. As he did so, he heard another guard settle into position behind him. The door closed a moment later, and it was just the four of them.

  The man smiled once more at Kealey, but it was a gesture devoid of warmth. “You’ve come a long way. Would you like something to drink? Something to eat, perhaps?”

  He knew that to refuse would be seen as an insult, and he didn’t want to set them on edge. At least not yet. “Just water.”

  The order was given to the guard behind Kealey. Hearing the door open and close once again, he took advantage of the brief distraction to study his host.

  As far as the U.S. intelligence community was concerned, Arshad Abdul Kassem was a blank page. Even his age could not be verified, though Kealey’s briefing officer in Baghdad had suggested that it probably fell somewhere between forty-five and fifty. This estimate was based on the fact that Kassem had served as a captain in the Republican Guard during the early years of the Iran-Iraq war, and then as a brigadier general in the months leading up to the second gulf war. When the Americans invaded in 2003, Kassem had made arrangements that resulted in the quiet surrender of his entire mechanized brigade outside Karbala. After several months in U.S. custody, Kassem was offered an even quieter deal by the CIA.

  With the fall of the Baath regime in 2003, the former officer had narrowly avoided sharing the fate of his party leader. At least, that was the official line of the U.S. government. In truth, his name had never
appeared on a watch list, for the Agency had a use for men like Arshad Kassem, high-profile figures in the former regime, with all the right connections. It made Kealey sick to deal with people like this, men who had, in all probability, committed unspeakable crimes under Saddam. Unfortunately, it was hard to find clean hands in high places, especially in this part of the world.

  “So…” Kassem let the word trail off. He was rotating his hands on the surface of the table. The movement was strange; it made Kealey think of a sleight-of-hand artist on a city street. “I believe you have something for me.”

  “Yes.” He didn’t bother looking down at the pack. “But before we get to that, I need to ask you a few things.”

  Kassem grinned broadly, revealing stained, irregular teeth. He spread his arms wide. “Of course. A man must earn his wages. What do you want to know?”

  Kealey looked him dead in the eye. It all came down to this, the defining moment. He could still turn back. He could find a way out to the vehicles, he could walk back in with what was expected… but it would be the same as before, and he’d be no further forward.

  “I want you to tell me about the Babylon Hotel.”

  The Iraqi’s face became suddenly cautious, the insolent grin sliding away. “I don’t think I understand.”

  Kealey shook his head and leaned back in his seat, carefully appraising his host. “I think you do,” he said, “but we’ll come back to that. Let me ask it this way. Who, in your opinion, would benefit from al-Maliki’s death?”

  “That’s a very long list, my friend.”

  “I’m aware of that. I was hoping you might be able to narrow it down for me.”

  Kassem didn’t respond for a long time, but his curiosity finally won out. “And why would you think that?”

  “Because there’s a good chance the same people you used to work for are responsible,” Kealey replied. Then he added, “And because we pay you to know.”